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Last updated on March 19th, 2023
It’s once again time for my annual year in review for Diverse Tech Geek, as we’ll see how 2018 fared for the blog. The blog’s been through a lot this year, including a theme change and a major web host change. And, of course, there’s what’s happened over the year in both media and technology.
Information below is from my merging both Google Analytics data and Matomo data together, given my switch to the latter late in the year.
The top 10 posts for 2018
- Who are the most popular superheroes?
- How to block Twitter trolls in bulk
- PK Subban the second Black player to appear on an NHL video game cover
- Why is Scooby-Doo still popular after 50 years?
- Recommended streaming services for cartoons (2018 edition)
- Cartoons that should’ve entered public domain in 2018 (but didn’t)
- My favorite Linux distributions and desktop environments (2018)
- Boomerang’s streaming service has 150,000 subscribers; 2017 was a down year for animation cable channel ratings
- 10 LGBTQ people of color cartoon characters
- 5 South Asian characters in cartoons
By far, the most popular post for 2018 was the one about who are the most popular (and familiar to the general public) superheroes.
Coming in at #2 is my post about how to block Twitter trolls. Given the problems with trolling on Twitter, not to mention social media’s problems this year, I can see why that post was popular.
Nashville Predators hockey star (and one of the Black players in the sport) P.K. Subban presumably attracted video game and hockey fans to the blog. A similar reaction probably came from fans of Scooby-Doo, or at least those remembering 2019 is the 50th anniversary of the franchise.
Streaming services were still popular blog topics. See my animation streaming service review guide for 2018, plus a post about Boomerang’s streaming service/a look back at how the year 2017 fared for animation cable TV channels.
The “diverse” side of Diverse Tech Geek is represented in the #9 and #10 slots. My post about LGBTQ people of color cartoon characters saw some traffic during LGBT Pride Month in June. The post about South Asians in cartoons was a follow-up post to one I wrote about the problems with “The Simpsons” (and Apu as a stereotype).
Changes to Diverse Tech Geek
Diverse Tech Geek has gone through a lot of changes this year. Among the biggest changes:
- A move to a virtual private server, Digital Ocean, after a near-week-long outage (and down time) on my former web host left me irritated enough to seek an alternative. So far, pages seem to load faster, and I’m paying a few dollars less than before. However, I’ve also had to make a few other changes as a result. One is a switch to a third-party email service, Fastmail.
- A switch in themes, this time to Poseidon (by ThemeZee).
- Paring back on the number of categories to two main ones, “Media” and “Tech,” to make following just one of the two main topics easier for readers.
- Bringing back the “Hire Me” page, as I’m currently looking for a new job.
- Dropping Google+ as a social network. It turns out it was just as well, as several weeks later, Google announced the social network’s being shuttered anyway.
- Dropping Google Analytics for Matomo (formerly known as Piwik) for website analysis, as part of paring back on what felt like an overreliance on Google services.
- And finally, Gutenberg’s debut in WordPress has left me less-than-impressed… and strongly considering switching blogging platforms altogether. So far, likely candidates include Ghost and Hugo, though nothing else seems to match WordPress’ functionality, prominence, and relative ease of use.
That wraps up the 2018 year in review for the blog. As for the future, I look forward to making 2019 (and the final year of this decade) a good year for Diverse Tech Geek. And, of course, I hope you’ll be here, too! If there’s anything you’d like to see on the blog, let me know in the comments.
